Exams

As stated on the course syllabus, the midterm and final exams are “closed book with note sheet.” This webpage provides additional guidance on exams for this course.

• It will be possible to retake an exam under certain conditions.

• All solutions must be written by hand on blank paper and turned in at the end of the exam.

• You may not consult any printed, written, electronic, or other materials. Exceptions:
  1. you may bring into the exam one page of handwritten notes (one side of US letter sized paper only) for Exams 1, 2, and 3; for the final exam, two sides of handwritten notes are permitted.
  2. You may also bring and consult the three pages of the MATH121 statistical tables.
  3. You may use a scientific, non-graphing, non-programmable calculator.

• Technically speaking, any material covered in any lecture, reading, or homework assignment is eligible to appear in the midterm or final exams. In practice, most exam questions will be similar to a homework question, an example done in class, or other assigned practice questions.

• In the three midterm exams, bathroom breaks are not permitted. The final exam will be divided into two parts with an optional bathroom break permitted between the two parts.

• Solutions must employ methods we have studied in class; other approaches will receive little credit.

Retakes

Under certain circumstances as it is possible to retake a midterm exam and recover some of the points lost. Please see the retake policy.

Exam 1

Exam 1 covers material from Topics 0-4 inclusive.

The duration of the exam is 75 minutes, and there will be questions worth a total of approximately 75 points on the exam. So you should budget your time at the rate of about one point per minute. Try to allocate your time wisely: spend only about 10 minutes on a 10-point question, and about 5 minutes on a 5-point question, and so on.

One side of handwritten notes are permitted. No bathroom breaks are permitted.

Likely questions and topics include:

• A true/false section. Do not guess, as incorrect answers are penalized: correct answer =+2 points, incorrect answer = -2 points, blank answer = 0 points.
• Hypothesis testing
• \(p\)-values
• Regression
• Empirical rule (68-95-99.7 rule)
• Describing a distribution in words

Curving

An explanation of the curving for exam one is available on a separate page: Curving for Exam 1